Save Article

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West: Is It Real or Marketing?

By

WSJ Staff

Apr 8, 2012 1:41 am ET

Is the relationship between reality star Kim Kardashian and Kanye West a marketing move or something real? Typically the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t be concerned about the intimate personal lives of celebrities or Kardashians, but when the line between dating and marketing gets blurred we get interested.

Music mogul Russell Simmons, who knows both Kim and Kanye (he basically knows everybody in entertainment) for some reason decided to weigh in on the relationship in an online essay that seemed totally unnecessary and that we wished he had written for our site. So is it love or salesmanship? “No scripture, no prophet, no religious or spiritual practice will ever say that money will make you happy (calm the noise). It took me thirty years of being in the public spotlight to get to where I am today in my understanding of this,” Simmons writes. Wait, so it’s not about dollars?